Hey there, Reader,

​My third public task study is officially in the books!​

For seven days, I documented the tasks competing for my attention. Client work, podcast production, homeschooling, family responsibilities, and the final preparations for Saturday's inaugural Monster Mash Dash 🧟‍♀️

There was also a pet surgery, missing library book, sick kid, and last-minute changes to our race route.

You know. A normal week. 😂

But here's what surprised me.

I still depend on other people doing their part before I can do mine. A lot.

I've consciously moved from 80% of my revenue coming from done-for-you client services to 80% coming from advising/consulting so that my success would be less dependent on the performance and reliability of others.

When I did my first public task study in November 2024, I was managing nine email inboxes, three communication channels, three project management systems, and a substantial amount of client work.

By February 2026, I'd reduced the number of inboxes and systems, was offboarding a client, and had been working with an operations director to simplify things.

And now? I have way fewer client commitments, a highly effective team in my corner, and a newly acquired membership that's intentionally designed not to require my attention every day.

A lot has changed.

But I still depend on other people doing what they need to do.

Sometimes that's a client getting me information. Sometimes it's coordinating podcast production. Sometimes it's making sure a kid is logged into tutoring or arranging who's handling school pickup.

And sometimes it's waiting for a race timing company to finish testing registration software so I can turn registration back on and go to bed. 🙃

The responsibilities have changed, but the dependencies haven't disappeared.

Not all dependencies are problems.

Sometimes they're simply part of how the work gets done. The question is whether I've accounted for them when making plans.

Here's why that matters.

When people hear task study, they sometimes assume I'm talking about a time study.

I'm not.

A time study asks how long you're spending on different activities.

A task study looks at what's actually competing for your attention throughout the day.

That's where I prefer to start.

Because if you discover you're spending an hour a day on email, it's tempting to decide you need to get faster at email or hire someone to manage it.

But what if email isn't the issue?

What if the more useful thing to understand is how many different responsibilities, decisions, and dependencies you're managing?

Optimizing email won't necessarily tell you anything about that.

And this is the part I love about task studies: The data is neutral.

It doesn't tell me I'm too busy.

It doesn't tell me I need to delegate more.

It doesn't tell me I should be doing anything differently.

It gives me information I can use to make those decisions.

For example, one thing that barely appeared in this week's task study was Velocity Generator.

And that's exactly right.

VG is a group membership with a deliberate rhythm of weekly reviews, scheduled calls, and quarterly planning. It isn't supposed to require me to work on it every day. And it's working beautifully as it's designed.

Which brings me to the bigger takeaway from this week:

You can make significant changes to your business and still benefit from looking at what's actually happening now.

I know my business pretty well. I've been through this exercise before. And I still learned something I hadn't noticed.

That's why I keep doing it.

To have better information when it's time to decide what comes next.

And that's also a big part of why I bought Velocity Generator.

It's a place for established women business owners to step away from the day-to-day long enough to look at their businesses, make thoughtful decisions, and move forward with intention.

I'm hosting a Velocity Generator Open House on Wednesday, November 11, at 8 a.m. Pacific / 11 a.m. Eastern.

I'll show you how the membership works, what our planning and review process looks like, and how we approach making decisions about what deserves attention.

If you're curious, I'd love to have you join us.

​Come to the Velocity Generator Open House​

And if you followed along with the task study, thank you for being part of it. I hope it gave you a few things to think about in your own business.

In your corner,

Tonya

P.S. One of the most interesting things about this study was realizing how much coordination gets filed under “just what moms do.” I'm still thinking on that, but hope to unpack it further later this week.

This email was written by Tonya Kubo (not AI). If you're receiving it, it means you have signed up for one of my offers in the vast expanse of the internet. Some links here are affiliate links, meaning I might make money if you use them to make a purchase.